Variability of human technical behaviours in the Egyptian Nile Valley
at the end of the Pleistocene
UMR CNRS 7194 HNHP, département Homme et Environnement, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle –
Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - Sorbonne Université s, Paris, France,
During the Nubia Salvage Campaign and the following expeditions from the 1960's to the 1980's, numerous sites attributed to the Late Palaeolithic (~25-15 ka) were found in the Nile Valley, particularly in Nubia and Upper Egypt. This region is one of the few to have allowed human occupations during the dry marine isotope stage 2 in northern Africa and is therefore key to the understanding of how human populations adapted to environmental changes. In addition, this high number of sites seems to correspond to a high diversity of chrono-cultural entities, mostly defined on typological criteria. This, along with the use of a specific terminology ‘Late Palaeolithic’ may have contributed to the view of a northeastern African record with no link with the record of neighbouring regions (northwestern, eastern Africa, Levant, Arabia).
In this presentation, we will focus on two sites located near Esna, in Upper Egypt: E71K20, attributed to the Silsilian industry and E71K18-area C, attributed to the Afian industry. We will present their technological characteristics and compare them with other sites attributed to the same industries. This, in turn, will allow us to discuss the evidence for technological variability in the Late Palaeolithic in the Egyptian Nile Valley and its implications for the understanding of population dynamics in northeastern Africa at the end of the Pleistocene.
References:
- Wendorf, F., & Schild, R. (1976). Prehistory of the Nile Valley. New: Academic Press.
- Close, A. E., Wendorf, F., & Schild, R. (1979). The Afian: a study of stylistic variation in a Nilotic industry. Department of Anthropology, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Southern Methodist University.
- Leplongeon, A. (2017). Technological variability in the Late Palaeolithic lithic industries of the Egyptian Nile Valley: The case of the Silsilian and Afian industries. PLOS ONE, 12(12), e0188824. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188824
